Some of your family
and friends, and even some Bernie fans, will increasingly pressure you
to support Hillary Clinton. They'll expect you to abandon the
considerable political leverage the Sanders campaign has created.
They'll ask you to transfer your vote to her, without reward.

Bernie himself would be discarding his 55-year demand for deep change,
and alienating those who demand change with him, were he to endorse a
candidate who has defied what we have worked for.

Cautious liberals who want mild reform without risk or inconvenience
will argue that Trump is too crazy, too racist, too sexist, too
dangerous. They will warn of his thugs, walls, deportations, and
insults.

So if you reply that both Hillary and Trump would serve a murderous
military, big banks, big corporations, labor exploitation, the prison
industry, fracking and other environmental destruction, they will call
you a purist.

If you explain that Trump and Hillary will begin to sound
increasingly like one another, appealing to one another's voters,
you'll be called uninformed. If you claim that Hillary is basically a
liberal Republican and Trump a conservative Democrat, you'll be
dismissed.

If you remind them
that polls show Bernie beating Trump better than Hillary, and that
polls show Bernie more trusted than Hillary, they'll say that it's time
for a woman president. If you say it's more important we have a
president whose policies benefit women, they'll be annoyed.

If you persist, saying that Bernie's political revolution goes to sleep
whenever a centrist Democrat is elected, and that Trump appears less
aggressive than Hillary on war and globalization, and that both
candidates would be relatively isolated by Congress, you'll be called
unrealistic.

Then If you let them know you'll vote for a third party candidate
sooner than an establishment candidate, they'll call you a spoiler. But
you can't spoil something that's rotten.

Finally, if you declare that you're committing your life to building a
healthy society that serves all people and honors all species, and that
you'll risk your convenience to advance this, and that you're more
excited to create beauty than to consume stuff, that you're more
interested in sharing than owning, and that you'll live simply so that
the planet can revive, you'll be called too idealistic.

But when you embrace Bernie as a model for your life, even more than as
a candidate, you'll provide America with new definitions of success and
practicality, exactly when we need these.

Glover is founder
of a dozen organizations and campaigns dedicated to ecology and social
justice. paulglover.org